the first speaker is going to be the honorable shirley ann jackson. she's the 18th president of rensular polytech nique institute in troy, new york. this is the oldest institute in the united states and it's my great pleasure to announce her. >> good afternoon. you know there's a significant transformation under way globally in the way we make predictions, make products, make connections and ultimately make progress or not. the transformation i'm speaking of is being driven of course by the extraordinarily rapid expansion and availability of data from multiple sources and ever more powerful analytical and computational capacity that is generating yet new information. let me begin quickly with a vignette that may be a harbinger of things to come. as superstorm sandy, i'm sure you know a lot about it, was beginning to gather steam in the caribbean, five days before it slammed into new jersey and new york, u.s. forecasters were predicting a monster storm but uncertain of its path. by most indications this unusually powerful and complex form would graze t